Metaphor Refantazio’s instant success joins the recent turn-based RPG explosion

Developer Atlus’ Metaphor: ReFantazio was released this week with a couple of major milestones. It is not only the company’s fastest-selling game on Steam, but also the biggest launch. While this might come as a surprise to some, it shouldn’t, because turn-based RPGs pull in thousands of players every week. Atlus’ latest is part of a long line of turn-based hits, and it once again proves we need more of them.

What sets Metaphor: ReFantazio apart is that it’s a brand new series that hasn’t got the backlog of games to prove its quality like, say, Persona does. It’s a fresh start hardcore fans of the genre can dive deep into that’s also approachable to newcomers. But this is hardly surprising, given how much more popular turn-based JRPGs have become in recent years.

2024 alone has seen the release of some extremely well-received turn-based JRPGs that players return to week after week to keep concurrent player numbers relatively high. Atlus’ Persona 3 Reload has an all-time peak player count of 45,002, and current player counts hitting around 5,000 players per day. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, the continuation of the beloved Yakuza series, was released to a similar all-time peak of 46,161, and has a smaller dedicated fan base of roughly 2,500 players each day.

Atlus confirmed via Twitter that Metaphor: ReFantazio had hit one million units sold, but we’ve not hit a peak concurrent player count yet. At the time of writing, 76,036 players were battling bosses, locating every character, and grinding for XP in-game over the last 24 hours, but that record could easily be broken over the coming days.

Persona 3 is definitely a fan favorite from Atlus, but it’s Persona 5 Royal that highlights the stickiness that great games in this genre can have. That game had a much lower all-time peak of 35,474 players but still gets around 17,000 daily, almost two years after its initial launch.

Of course, it’s impossible to discuss the popularity of turn-based RPGs without pointing to the game that brought them to the forefront just over a year ago. Baldur’s Gate 3 has a whopping all-time peak player count of 875,343, with over 100,000 players still experimenting to find new endings and dialogue each day.

Growing up in the ’90s, JRPGs were the games that gave you the most bang for your buck, but they weren’t always the most popular games because they were complex, time-consuming, and usually had frustrating difficulty spikes. That perception certainly hasn’t stopped the genre’s growth, though, and the quality of these games hasn’t faltered much, as you can read about in our Metaphor: ReFantazio review, as the numbers for the genre’s best and most recent releases highlight.

Our guides can also tell you about all Metaphor: ReFantazio playable characters. If you’re still on your first playthrough, you might want to check up on the details about Metaphor: ReFantazio’s new game plus so you can plan ahead or spend a bit more time in each section before moving on.

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